


Blood Is Life (Eternal)

by illwynd



Category: Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Blood Drinking, Death, I have never been to Norway, M/M, Sequel, Violence, vampire eroticism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 11:02:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5088211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Much of a century after being attacked in Iceland, Loki is happily reunited with his mortal. But time is still passing, and soon Loki will have a decision to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [Blood Is Life](http://archiveofourown.org/works/991522/chapters/2042151). Should probably read that first. Also, yes, there is a small cameo in this. :D

The world was different when Loki and his mortal were reunited.

The new century had changed many things about the life they could make for themselves. It made quite a few things easier, even if a new sort of care had to be taken to avoid the notice of mortal officialdom. Travel was simpler, mere money and red tape and patience rather than the gamble it had once been. Setting themselves up in each new place with all the luxuries now called conveniences, arranging for income and lodgings and transport—all of it was changed, mostly for the better. Modern medical resources even made it possible for Loki to get the blood he required without killing, most of the time.

The skills that Thor had acquired in the years they were apart were responsible for much of the ease with which they slipped through the world unnoticed.

“How did you learn to do that?” Loki asked one evening shortly after their reunion, when the sun had just gone down and he rose to find Thor with his fingers flying across the peculiar little screen in his hand, doing something that Loki could barely yet comprehend.

Thor shrugged as Loki’s arms wrapped around him from behind, over the back of the couch.

“I had to do something with myself while I sought you,” he explained in a murmur.  

And it seemed Thor had spent much of that time taking in the swift changes of the past century with a purposeful deliberateness, taking in what he wished and ignoring what did not interest him. The new technologies he knew. And the people around them—somehow Thor conversed with them as easily as he ever had, absorbing the new manners and trends until no one might ever have guessed that his origins lay two centuries past in a rustic village in Norway. It was enough to make Loki feel ancient, at times, and enough to make him feel more keenly the loss of context brought by nearly a century asleep underground.

Loki tried to correct that lack, getting Thor to show him how to bring up news articles from the previous decades, poring through the endless screens of text, but there was just so much he had missed. Often he ended up asking Thor what had truly happened during such-and-such time.

“I don't remember,” was Thor’s usual reply, sad-eyed, apologetic. “I wasn't paying much attention, I think. It didn’t seem to matter.”

Loki could remember being a young mortal man, reading the histories as they were written in those days, feeling a hollow of awe open in his belly, a sense of being adrift in vastness, and ever since then he had paid attention to the world and the way it changed. He had watched the doings of the mortals as they devised new ways to kill and control one another, new ways to survive and to thrive and to twist the world around their fingers. Fascinated and horrified and endlessly amused, though he was no longer part of that world.

But Thor was not like him. 

“I was distracted. I was looking for you. For you, for any sign… for anyone who might know where you were.”

It took Loki a moment to realize what Thor had said, and concern knotted his cold white brow.

“You looked for other vampires?”

Thor hesitated before he nodded. “I did not find any, though, and I did not really expect… I just had to try. I missed you.”

Loki frowned again and kissed his neck in reproach for his recklessness.

*

That was how it was when they were reunited. They traveled together and adjusted to the new ways of the world around them—Loki adjusting with Thor's help, and the two of them adjusting as a pair, together. They spent the nights in each other's company until the worry of the long separation passed and both finally relaxed. 

And more than ever before, the years passed unheeded.

*

Loki only truly began to notice time’s passing again when he noticed the grey in Thor’s hair, hidden in amongst the golden blond strands.

They lay in bed that night and Loki ran his fingers through it over and over again, with the tenderness that had grown in him over the decades and now had his heart fully entwined.

Thor was aging so slowly Loki had barely noticed, but he was now no longer the young, strapping man Loki had found in that little church in the forests of Norway two centuries past. He was now a man in his prime—laugh lines etched around his blue eyes, shoulders thick and broad, his speech considered instead of boisterous, voice rich and deep.

He was just as beautiful as he’d always been. Loki wanted him as much as he ever had. And Loki began to realize the problem that lay before them.

Thor was aging. However slowly it was happening (courtesy of the little tastes he took of Loki's vampiric blood), time was not stopped for him as it was for Loki. And eventually, though it might take centuries, he would be gone, and Loki would be just as alone as he once was. As alone as he believed he was for the first few weeks after he woke from his long sleep. And Loki did not think he could handle that again.

The only choice he had was to bring Thor over to him, to make him a blood-drinker as well. But they’d had that conversation before, long before, when they first arrived in Iceland.

*

_Thor eyed him warily as Loki explained what their arrangement would be, and he still looked away when Loki said he would undoubtedly have to kill sometimes._

_“I will help you,” Thor said. “I will do what you ask, and I will keep you safe during daylight, and I will let you feed on me betimes. But…”_

_Loki raised a curious brow. “Yes?”_

_“But promise me I will never have to become like you,” Thor demanded, voice firm. “I will not kill to live.”_

_Loki had laughed, though some part of him ached and burned at the way Thor spoke of it. Of him. “Thor, you already kill to live. All things kill to live.”_

_Thor looked dubious, mouth curled with distaste. “Your victims are not beasts.”_

_“And what of your sacrifices? I know it is not just sheep’s blood that has stained your altars and your knives.”_

_Yet more uncomfortable shuffling. “Not_  mine _. And that is for the gods, anyway. It's not the same.”_

_Loki scoffed and stormed away, killed two peasants that evening out of sheer spite, glutting himself on their blood, and he had not mentioned it again. He hardly thought the issue would ever again arise. He had not yet known what Thor would come to mean to him._

But now he needed to know whether Thor would still hate the thought, if it would still disgust and horrify him. And he could not bring himself to ask.

*

Despite the ease of acquiring blood in these modern times, Loki still sometimes fed on his lover.

Not out of hunger, but for the closeness it brought them. The intimacy of holding him, tasting him, feeling the pulse of life in him stuttering over Loki’s tongue in hot, salty waves, and he knew Thor somehow enjoyed it as well, seeming not to feel the pain, or to feel it as something else entirely.

Sometimes, Loki stripped the clothes from Thor’s body, reverently, kissed his golden skin all over. Lapped at it, at the salt and the awareness of the blood throbbing hot within him, breathing the scent of sunlight that lingered on him, praising him for his beauty, nipping at his skin here and there, just to tease, to keep Thor guessing where he might choose to drink, feeling him gasp and startle each time. Then, when Thor began to writhe and sweat and his cock stood proud from its bed of curls, Loki would nudge his thighs apart, seeking the tenderest, softest skin between them, where he could set his teeth. He would feel Thor’s eagerness, his anticipation trembling in his body.

“Touch yourself,” Loki murmured into that spot where a thick blue vein waited under the pale skin of his inner thigh, and Thor’s hand would fly upon his straining erection, stroking as Loki bit, Thor stiffening and crying out, a long shuddering moan.

The blood somehow tasted particularly delicious at those times. Loki was never sure why. But he treasured it, savored it, loved it.

Thor would be dazed, smiling and limp with pleasure as Loki moved up to give him his mouthful in return. Sometimes after he’d taken it they kissed, Thor too drunk with satiation to care how it must look, the red staining both their lips.

*

There were many reasons why Loki was afraid to ask if Thor had changed his mind. But mostly he was afraid that Thor would refuse again, because Loki knew it would not change a thing. He would do it anyway.

*

“Where are we going next?” Thor asked one evening not long after Loki’s revelation about the grey in his mortal’s hair.

They had spent much of the previous decade traveling the Americas, just as they’d spent some years before that in Australia, and before that Asia, where they had come after wandering eastward from Loki’s native Greece.

The past few years they had paused in one northern city after another, and Loki had not minded, although truly he found that what passed for history in the New World felt thin and insubstantial to him, as if he might reach to touch the brick of some building the mortals fancied as old and it would crumble away into dust and dreams, and the true past would rise bright and terrible in its place, the mounds and monuments of tribes he’d read about whose names now were lost, peoples who had walked in the world here the last time he himself had seen the sun.

Loki was happy enough anyway, because Thor seemed to like those climes.

On stormy nights Loki watched his mortal’s face become animated, vivid with the need to tell tales, and Loki would sit with him and listen, or sometimes take him out to find a wider audience, for Thor was at heart still a priest of the old gods, still someone most alive when he was sharing his passion with others, speaking his truth and being heard.

And then there were the winters, unlike any Loki had lived through as a mortal. He had never been fond of the cold. But of course it could not freeze him now, his dislike an unbroken habit. And such weather was natural and welcome to Thor.

During winters, after a snowfall, Thor would bundle into coat and gloves and boots and ridiculous fuzzy hat with a bobble on top, and they would go out walking, the moonlight sparkling on the snow bright enough to sting in Loki’s eyes but beautiful enough that he could see why Thor had dragged him out into it.

Thor, cheeks red and nose running and breath white, strolling along with his hands in his pockets, so happy that Loki’s heart almost couldn’t stand the sight.

It ached.

If Loki made a vampire of him, he would be stealing all of that away. All of these mortal things Thor cherished. His hope of his Valhalla. Loki would be taking him away from all of that, forcing him into a secrecy and anonymity worse than anything he’d ever known, and he would be doing it selfishly, with no regard for what Thor wanted. Thor might loathe him for it and never forgive him.

Loki knew all of that, hated himself for it, and still… it changed nothing.

*

They were in Detroit when, one night, Thor went out by himself and did not return until midnight.

Loki usually would have been unconcerned. Thor was strong—shockingly strong for a mortal—and sensible, having long since learned to curb the anger that could rise in him like a bonfire, to turn it useful, to instead win his way through the world on the force of his genial smile and the breadth of his shoulders and the calm, convincing voice of a long-ago village priest.

Not to mention that enough of Loki’s blood ran in his veins to protect him from the more minor inevitable dangers of the world, small injuries and the illnesses that spread so easily among mortals.

So Loki did not often worry for him. But that night he could smell fear in Thor’s chilled sweat as soon as the door clattered open, and he was there beside him at once.

Thor locked the door carefully and silently, and he gave no sign of what had frightened him, but Loki could hear his heart racing, beating rapid and hard.

“What is it?”

Thor swallowed and frowned. “A woman followed me.”

Loki tilted his head. “Are you telling me this is a rare occurrence? With your looks, I thought you'd have to beat them back with a stick.”

The glance that Thor gave him was both frustrated and pleading, and it stopped Loki’s laughter.

“She… I saw her everywhere I went tonight, and it cannot have been chance. I am certain she was watching me, though I had never seen her before.”

Loki let himself drift to the window, tweaking the curtain aside and peering out, up and down the darkened, abandoned street.

This was not a rural village in Norway two centuries past. This was not the narrow streets of old Reykjavik. If it was a mortal, there would be no angry mob behind her in these more enlightened times; no one any longer believed in vampires or monsters of any kind, no one would light torches to roust out the demons in their midst.

But if it was not a mortal…

“What did she look like? Tell me everything.”

Thor did, and Loki listened, becoming more convinced that this was something else that they had not encountered before.

“I’m sorry,” Thor said when he finished. “I don’t know why she noticed me, but I have endangered us.”

Loki shook his head and went to draw Thor into a brief embrace.

“You haven’t. If she is another of my kind, it is hardly your fault. Nor is it your responsibility. I am the one who must protect _you_ from such things, my dear mortal protector.”

Thor accepted Loki’s kiss and the comfort he offered, but still he looked guilty, uncertain.

“And that is what I will do. Wait here and lock up behind me.”

Loki went out then into the dark, empty streets.

It did not take him long to find her, a young-looking vampire with wild strawberry-blonde hair and an impish grin, tiny fangs peeking out against her lip. She laughed when he confronted her, vulpine eyes flashing.

“Where did you find one like that?” she said, leaning casually against a brick wall colorful with spray-painted names and symbols, face half shadowed in the flickering streetlight. “I want one.”

Loki’s whole body was tensed as if to spring, to attack. He had never particularly liked the company of other blood-drinkers. But hearing her speak of Thor—it set his teeth on edge.

“We’ll leave your territory tomorrow night, if that’s what this is about,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.

The woman shrugged, careless. “Not my territory. Doesn’t matter to me.”

“Then why were you following him?”

The woman pouted at the sudden sharpness of Loki’s tone. “He just looked delicious,” she said, “but then I smelled you on him, and I was curious.”

Loki didn’t take his eyes off her. “Well, now you know.”

She looked at him, lip pooched out in an even deeper pout. “Don’t worry. I won’t touch him. Promise.”

Loki made no answer, jaw clenched.

The woman gave him the most innocent of looks, belied by the way her eyes glittered. “But really, if he matters so much to you, maybe you shouldn’t let him out alone in a city like this. It can be dangerous, you know.”

Loki was snarling before he realized it.

“Don’t get so upset," the woman shrugged. "I was just leaving anyway.”

Then, with a final grin and a flash of red-blonde hair she was gone, darting off into the shadows, leaving Loki where he stood, itching with annoyance, and then to hurry back to the rooms they’d made their own in that bleak city.

“We leave tomorrow,” he told Thor, because he was unwilling to take the chance that she’d been lying. Because he had no intention of taking chances with Thor’s safety or spending all his time worrying what might happen if they were apart for an hour.

And they had seen enough of Detroit anyway.

*

They traveled on, and more time passed, and the subtle changes he had begun to notice in his lover flickered over and over in his mind, time beginning to obsess him. The more time passed, the more chance there was for something terrible to happen. The more time passed—Loki tried to think of none of it, and he could hardly think of anything else.

*

“Perhaps Europe again.”

Thor looked shocked at Loki’s answer for a moment, then uncertain.

“Do you want to? Not to Iceland, perhaps.”

Thor thought, then shrugged, but he clearly knew what Loki was asking. “It’s not still there,” he said, a little hesitant. “I’ve looked it up. The town is, but…”

“We needn’t go anywhere you don’t wish to go. But we visited my homeland years ago. It’s only fair that we might visit yours.”

Thor shrugged again, a mask of indifference. But an hour later Loki glanced over his shoulder to find him nudging their passport applications through the mortal systems, and that told him all he needed to know of Thor’s desires.

*

The night before they were to travel, they said farewell to this new city together, wandering through favorite parks, hopping on the subway to distant neighborhoods, catching a late show at a little-known club where they had previously discovered several musicians they both enjoyed.

Loki had ordered a coffee just to hold it, the warmth between his fingers, occasionally pretending to sip, and he’d ordered for Thor a local microbrew, because his mortal lover’s tastes were somehow both stuck in the past and eternally adventurous. And it seemed he’d chosen well, because Thor tasted it suspiciously but soon began to relax and smile.

It was late when they returned home, and Loki of course was not at all tired, but Thor—despite the drink—was keyed up, anxious, as he often was before the stress and worry of traveling. Going across an ocean, it was too long a flight to risk in the ordinary way, even with the long nights. Too great a chance of delay, of Loki being caught in the open cabin of a plane after sunrise. He would have to travel in a coffin, as a corpse.

Thor paced around their room until Loki caught him and stopped him. Held him by both arms, soothing him, fixing him under his gaze, steadying.

“It will be all right, Thor. I’ve been alive over two thousand years and I’m not about to die now. We will both be fine.”

Thor sank against him, holding tight and pleading to be held, and Loki could feel the strength of his heartbeat.

*

Loki was absolutely going to do it. He just hadn’t admitted to himself that they were going to Norway so that Thor could see his home once more under the light of the sun.

*

“Come to bed,” Loki coaxed after they’d been standing there embracing for a ridiculously long time.

That night he did not bite Thor’s throat, though he wanted to—Thor hardly needed another thing to have to conceal as he passed through the annoyances of airport security—but Thor pressed him lower until Loki’s lips were brushing his chest, Thor’s hands in his hair guiding him to the lovely curve of muscle just beneath Thor’s nipple.

“Please,” Thor said, breathy.

Loki obeyed, biting, drinking, making Thor gasp and writhe, and then he bit into his own wrist for Thor to suck.

“I love you,” Thor said, sounding on the edge of awe afterward. “I love you so much.”

“You should try to sleep,” Loki answered in a murmur, enfolding Thor in his arms.

It was hours till dawn, but he could slip away when morning came, and he could not think of any better way to spend the night than this.

*

They did not, in fact, seek Thor’s home first.

First they traveled the cities, seeing what these northern lands had become since they had last been here. Cleaner, richer, healthier—there was a wholesomeness to it, a wholly different flavor from the American cities, and Thor seemed to appreciate it all, but with a note of detachment. Happiness and loss mingled in his smile. Loki supposed that was only natural.

When they left the cities and ventured into the countryside, Thor’s somber mood grew more pronounced.

Loki did all he could think of to counteract it.

“Dinner?” he said one night shortly after waking. “Tell me you haven’t eaten yet. I heard last night of a little place in the village. Specializes in traditional fare, they said.”

Thor blinked at him and admitted he had not eaten since lunch, and Loki grinned. “Good. I will want to see you eat your fill.”

Even so it was an unexpected pleasure to watch as Thor took in the scents of the food as they walked in, an older woman in a blue apron, grey hair tied back in a loose bun, guiding them to one of the four small tables in the place. It was an unexpected pleasure to watch Thor as his eyes skimmed through the menu, little gasps of recognition. When he ordered, the hostess soon understood what this was and got into the spirit of the thing, offering to let him sample practically everything in her kitchen. And then, watching as Thor ate, tasting and trying a bite here, a bite there—

Loki again had that feeling of almost painful happiness at Thor’s joy.

He loved Thor more than he had ever loved anyone. He loved Thor more than he had thought he could love at all.

“Do you not want anything?” their hostess asked him at one point, eyeing him. “Such a thin young man you are.”

Loki had only smiled back at her. “Oh, I ate earlier, I’m sorry to say. But it is enough to see my partner enjoying it.”

For a moment she tilted her head, studying the pair of them, but she let it go without comment, and then Thor was interrupting, eyes hopeful as he asked if she had a particular liquor he had not seen in quite some time, then sparkling as she brought a shotglass of it, so cold that condensation gathered on its sides, a faint herbal scent wafting from it.

“Skol,” Thor said, downing his drink.

Later, after they had left and made their way back to the inn at which they were staying, Loki found himself wondering in annoyance whether the woman had been one who still held those strange prejudices, who recoiled to see the two of them—two men—as lovers.

When he voiced this thought, though, Thor looked away, sheepish.

“No, I think she thought I was your father. I don’t really see how, though…”

Loki gazed back at him, stunned. They certainly did not seem so far apart in age as that. Loki had been in his mid 20s when he’d been turned, and Thor… there was the grey in his hair and the creases by his eyes, but...

“What she thought doesn’t matter,” Thor insisted, putting his lips to Loki’s face, kissing him insistently and making himself seem younger than ever thereby.

Loki could still smell the liquor on his breath, and when he tasted Thor’s blood there was just enough of it lingering for a little bit of giddiness to reach him as well.

*

Loki was absolutely going to do it to him, and he was going to do it soon, before any more time could slip through their fingers. He would not be able to stop himself, even if Thor begged.

*

When Loki woke the next night, it was to an empty room, with a note saying that Thor had gone to a small local museum where they had an exhibit on life in the village in centuries past.

Loki left a note beside it, telling Thor to get something to eat and not wait up for him, if he was tired.

They were very near the place now, and Loki made his way back to the spot, on foot, the same way he’d done long ago, though this time he was not driven by such fear. And he did find it, though Thor’s little church was long since swallowed up by the wilderness. A smudge of darker dirt, the last marks of burnt timbers from when they’d been driven away. A few cracked paving stones from Thor’s doorstep. A small pile of crumbled brick that had been the hearth. That was all that remained.

But Loki stood there for hours in the night, in the place he had first found his lover, the first place he had taken him, holding him as he fought and drinking his blood and feeling his own knees practically buckle at the sheer goodness of it.

That was how it had started, and now Thor loved him, though he did not deserve it. Though he killed to live. Though he was the same monster he had been, alone, for two thousand years. And Loki was now planning to take him against his will again, far more dreadfully. Permanently. To make him a monster as well.

Loki thought of it, in that place.

Thor might run from him. After Loki turned him, he would no longer be able to control him in any way—not by force or fear or the craving for his blood. Thor could decide he hated him, could flee and escape, and Loki might never find him again.  

But the soft grey shining in among blond meant that if Loki did not risk it, someday he would lose Thor anyway.

When he crept back just before dawn, Thor yawned and rolled over in bed, cracked an eye.

“Did you find it?” he murmured, sleepy.

Loki would have blanched if it were still possible. “Did I find what?”

“My church. Where you found me.”

There was no point in lying, probably. Loki nodded, curling up beside him for the few minutes he had. “There’s not much left.”

Thor made a contemplative noise. “I didn’t think there would be. I sought for it today, but everything looks different now. Tomorrow night, you can show me.”

Loki nuzzled at his shoulder, nodded again in agreement, though he knew that was nothing but a lie.

Tomorrow night he was going to do what he planned.

*

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

When Loki woke, he found Thor sitting cross-legged with his computer, studying satellite images of the woods around the village, trying to match it to memories almost two centuries old.

“Later,” Loki said when Thor looked up hopefully. He hoped he sounded earnest. “I have something I have to do first.”

Thor frowned when he realized what Loki meant.

A town this size had only a small clinic, no decent supplies of blood to spare, and Loki hadn’t had a proper meal in weeks, since they’d left Oslo. And he had never much been one for wild game.

And that frown meant it still bothered Thor, though he tried not to show it.

But Loki had little choice tonight. He could not go into this hungry. He needed enough to make Thor strong.

He felt Thor’s eyes on his back as he left.

He hunted his victim, all the while thinking about preparations. Little things, like how he ought to make sure Thor’s nails were trimmed, and that his hair was at the length he wished it, and offer him the chance to shave if he chose. How he should give him a chance for one last meal, one last drink, one last sunset. One last orgasm. The last chance for anything that only a living body could do or bear.

As Loki sank his fangs into the neck of his struggling victim, he knew he couldn’t. If he so much as hinted, Thor would know, and then… Loki could not think of it. The horrible ache of guilt in his belly was bad enough as it was. If Thor refused, Loki would do it anyway, but having to actually face Thor’s protests might kill him. Having to force him—to chase him like a monster, to listen to Thor cursing him before he even tasted his blood on his tongue—the thought made hot tears spring to Loki’s eyes and a sick pain clench in his belly.

He had to simply do it and give Thor no chance to resist. He had to do it before he could weaken in his resolve. He had to do it _now_.

Loki hid the victim’s body carefully but mindlessly, all his thoughts on Thor.

*

The water was running in the shower when Loki returned.

“Loki?” Thor’s shout came muffled by the pattering of water and by the door, so Loki entered to answer, stepping into the small, steamy tiled space.

“Yes, it’s me.”

Sounds of Thor washing himself, sputtering with face under the spray, and Loki gazed through the gauzy curtain, watching the outline of Thor’s body as he moved.

Still so very beautiful. So strong, so lovely. Even the sculptors of Loki’s youth could never have captured it, because they could not have captured the way he moved. Loki watched, silent and entranced, as Thor finished and emerged, wrapping himself in a towel, rubbing himself dry before swapping the towel for a robe.

Loki was still gazing at him, drinking in the sight, as he knotted the belt around his waist.

These were the last few moments of Thor’s mortal life. The last few moments in which he would ever see Thor like this, the mortal heart beating hot and tender in his chest. Perhaps the last moments in which Thor would love him. Loki liked that this moment was such a simple, intimate one. Such an ordinary thing as watching him as he bathed and dried. Loki tried to burn it into his memory for all time.

“What?” Thor asked, grinning as Loki continued to watch him in quiet reverie.

Loki stood and closed the distance between them.

“Don’t be afraid, beloved.”

And he did not give Thor even a moment to answer before he struck, pulling Thor to him and bending his mouth to Thor’s throat as he had thousands of times, but biting deep as he had only once before.

Thor’s cry of pain was more of a whimper, and he barely struggled this time, his hands giving a few weak shoves before giving in and clutching instead.

Loki was draining him, the strong heady rhythm of Thor’s heart offering his life up in hot draughts, and Loki felt his own shoulders rising and falling as he drank, like a predator bent over his prey. And he was. He was.

He had wanted this for almost two hundred years. He had satisfied himself with little tastes as often as he could get them, but what he really wanted was this, mouthful after mouthful of Thor pouring into him, utterly his, utterly taken, consumed.

What he had wanted was Thor’s heartbeat, now speeding as the uncontrollable fear hit when he understood that Loki was killing him, as he felt himself going weak, dying in the arms of his lover.  

Loki wanted to drain every drop from him, and he wanted to feel the tender, precious heat of Thor’s body pressed against him forever, struggling almost as if in passion. He wanted Thor to be his in every possible way.

He could not hear anything over the sound of Thor’s heart, but he felt moisture on his cheek and was unsure whether it might be tears or simply droplets from wet blond hair.

Then Thor’s struggles began to grow feeble. His heartbeat began to stutter and stall, and only a few mouthfuls more would be too much for him to survive.

Loki stopped, pulling back while Thor still lived. But he did not dare look into Thor’s eyes.

It was just like two centuries ago when he tore his wrist and forced it to Thor’s lips.

“Drink,” he demanded. “Do as I say, Thor. Please.”

For a terrible moment he thought Thor would truly refuse. But then Thor’s mouth was on him, and all fears fled.

Loki had made sure to start the night full of blood. The amount he’d drained from Thor had made him almost bloated with it. But it meant now that he did not need to stop Thor until he’d drunk as much as he could hold. And oh, Thor was already so strong, the feeling of him sucking was a terrible, wonderful pressure on Loki’s heart.

Halfway through Loki went from holding his lover’s limp body to being clutched tight, and he actually heard Thor growl.

When Thor’s mouth released him, Loki sighed happily.

“Rest now, just for a moment,” he breathed. “Then more.”

Thor lay beside him on the floor of their little room, and his body began to twitch and then to writhe, head tilted back against the rug, arms tensing and slackening. Loki rolled to his side to soothe him, caressing a hand down his chest.

“It’s all right, Thor. It’s all right. It will feel strange for a while, but you will be fine.”

The blue of Thor’s eyes was shockingly bright, the color of the sky at twilight.

“Loki,” he gasped, like a plea. “Loki…”

Loki was done with resting, and he drew closer, draping himself across his lover as he sank his teeth in again, and this time Thor’s body stiffened beneath him and he heard Thor crying out, and without detaching himself from Thor’s neck he fumbled one arm free, bringing his wrist—still sluggishly bleeding—to Thor’s mouth.

When Thor got the idea and began to drink—drinking from Loki even as Loki drank from him, their mouths and hearts and veins a complete circuit joining them together as one great being with a single aching pulse—it was the most intense pleasure Loki had ever felt.

And Thor was so very strong against him. So very perfect in his arms. If this was the last Loki ever had of him he would still be grateful for it.

When it ended, when they both somehow grew sated and ceased to suck at once, when they both fell back panting, Loki still could not look his lover in the eye.

Even when he heard Thor’s breaths turn to sobs, the sound of him being quietly overwhelmed with emotion, with the immensity of what had just happened.

“Why did you…”

“Because I couldn’t bear to lose you,” Loki said at once. “Couldn’t bear to lose you _again_.”

Thor did not understand, _could not_ understand, what the centuries had been like for Loki, what it meant to have someone like Thor beside him for the first time… but another choked breath from Thor made Loki’s heart break, made him cringe and look away.

“I know you didn’t want this, and I know you will hate me now, but I would rather you hate me and live than… I could not bear it if you died, Thor, I could not lose you, even if it meant doing this to you.”

“You were not going to lose me,” Thor said, dazed. “How were you going to lose me?”

“I _would_ have someday. I nearly lost you twice already, and it doesn’t matter if I could have kept you safe, in the end _time_ would have taken you from me—”

“Loki…”

“—you were aging and someday you would have been _gone_ , and I—”

Thor’s hand touched him then, just a simple touch to his cheek but it forced Loki’s gaze to meet his.

“Loki.”

“What?”

“What made you think I would say no?”

Loki blinked and fumbled for an answer. “That is what you said, long ago. You said you would never want to become like me.”

Thor’s eyes were still damp and red—for that matter, his hair was still sodden—but his expression was soft. Worried.

“I have not said that since Iceland.”

Loki shrugged, brow knitting, uncertain why that mattered.

Thor saw his look and breathed a sigh. “Did it not occur to you that I have fallen in love with you since then? That I spent most of a century searching for you since then?”

Loki opened his mouth and shut it again.

“Did you really think I would want to be parted from you now, after everything? Did you not think I would guess why you wanted to let me visit my home, for a last goodbye to my mortal life before you finally brought me to you?”

A sudden surge of shame, hot as Thor’s blood still thrumming inside him. The idea that Thor had been aware of Loki’s months of unconscious preparations, of working himself up to the inevitable—that Thor had watched that quietly and gone along with it, never complaining, never…

“Did you really know?”

Thor nodded. “I just thought you would tell me when you were ready, so that I could choose when.”

More shame, more guilt, so that Loki had to blink back his own tears. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to, I truly did. I wanted to give you everything, make sure it would be perfect, bring you over as gently as I could… I wanted to do that.”

Thor gazed at him sadly and said nothing.

“I… I just thought you would refuse, and I couldn’t…” Loki could not blink enough to help, could not wipe the bloody tears away, but Thor kissed them from his face.

“I’m sorry,” Loki repeated several more times, until Thor put his arms around him.

They lay like that until the death of Thor’s body required their attention.

*

Thor’s eyes widened as it happened, and Loki kept a hand to his, reassuring.

“It’s all right, my love. Don’t try to fight it. Just let it happen,” Loki said, softly. “It won’t last long, and then you will be done with such things for good.”

Thor nodded but then shuddered as something happened within, squirmed against the unaccustomed and troubling sensations inside his body. Loki stroked a hand along his shoulder.

He could barely remember what it had been like to die, so long ago.

“Talk to me,” Thor pleaded, blue eyes frightened, voice faintly trembling, body shivering. “Tell me of your youth… distract me.”

Loki had spoken of his mortal life rarely, but in this moment he would not have denied Thor anything.

He smiled a little as he began. “All right... you will probably not believe this, but I was just an artisan, and not a particularly renowned one. A simple potter. Of course, I had ideas above my station, and a thirst for knowledge, and a belief that I could be more than I was, so I befriended a group of philosophers in my city…”

Loki succeeded in distracting Thor, who watched him with dazed eyes, but he could not quite manage to distract himself. Thor was changing before him, subtly, swiftly. The little mortal sounds of his body falling quiet in an unsettling cascade into silence. The last ruddy flush to his skin fading to unnatural pallor. The glow of his body heat slowly seeping away.

But the eyes that watched Loki, intent upon his tale, were more alive than ever, seeming to flicker like a night sky filled with distant lightning, a far-off storm.

Loki reached to touch him, a sense of loss in his breast as he grasped Thor’s hand and felt him squeeze tighter with each throb and twist of pain. Loki’s other hand joined it, stroking his knuckles.

The parts of Thor that were still mortal, two centuries past his birth, were dying. Because of him. Loki had kept him alive. And Loki had killed him.

By the time he got to the part of the tale where he met the vampire who made him, Thor was lying quiet, expression calm, and it was over.

Loki helped him up, followed him back into the shower, stripping the soiled robe from him and joining him under the water to sluice the last wastes of mortality away, watching it swirl down the drain.

“So you didn’t love him, the vampire who made you?” Thor asked as Loki washed him with care, his own inky hair sticking to the back of his neck as it was wetted by the spray.

Loki shook his head. “No, I didn’t. Nor did he love me. He wanted a student, but I’m afraid I was a poor one. Not an obedient one, at least.”

Thor took this in quietly, and he allowed it when Loki pressed their bodies together.   

The flesh already felt different, in ways that Loki could not possibly describe. Harder, unbreakable, but skin smooth and soft like satin the palest shade of gold. Thor moved as if every motion felt new—flexing fingers, tightening them into a fist that he studied with a twist to his brow.

Gone was the tender fragility of his great strength, the life inside him that Loki could always sense like a tiny candle in a vessel of pure, thin glass, which he had protected, held in his hands for a warmth he had not known he needed—his mortal lover of two centuries, his beloved, whose happiness could make Loki so sweetly ache, whose presence he could not do without—

“Do you forgive me?” Loki asked.

Thor did not say a word but nodded and kissed his mouth and held him close, and Loki supposed that was all he could wish.

*

Teaching Thor how to be a vampire was unlike anything Loki had anticipated.

The next night when they woke together—Thor’s eyes blinking open in the pitch-black room beside him—Loki had put a finger to Thor’s lips and insisted.

“We’ll do anything you like, now. I will show you anything, do anything you ask. Because I took the choice from you and I shouldn’t have,” he said. “So what do you want first? Are you hungry yet?”

Thor shook his head, quiet in Loki’s arms.

An hour later they were in the woods, Thor crouching down among the dry leaves with his palms pressed to the soil, eyes closed, a last farewell to the place where his church once stood.

On the way there, Thor had seemed to take everything in, savoring the cool breeze that ruffled his hair, the layered sounds of the village fading into the distance with the nearer chorus of the forest at night. And now he lifted his head, turning his pale face to the trees that rustled overhead, the moon far above shining down through the darkness.

He gazed up, and Loki watched, unable to guess what he felt, anxious, waiting. When Thor stood, brushing the dirt from his hands, he was smiling.

“Now we can go.”

And they had gone to the city, because that was what Thor chose. He did not want to kill if he did not have to, at least not yet, so together they stole into the blood reserves at the first hospital they found, and Thor drank from that as his first true meal as a vampire.

And then—the nightlife, the bars and coffee houses where the mortals gathered, and Thor watching them in fascination. Speaking to them, charming them as if by second nature. He was magnificent, with an aura of power about him and the fiercest, keenest, gentlest eyes, inviting trust and admiration. The mortals loved him, more than people always had. Loki watched silently from the shadows beside him, loving him even more than that.

When the last of the mortals turned in for the night, there were still hours of darkness left and they walked, wandered the city streets under the moonlight while Thor made sounds of quiet awe.

“So this is how the world has looked to you all these years?” Thor murmured, clutching Loki’s hand as they gazed out over the river, lights shimmering on the water like spirits.

“I suppose so,” Loki replied, uncertain.

“It’s all so beautiful.”

Loki shifted on his feet.

Surely he had noticed the beauty of it before, but he mostly remembered the darkness. The chaos. He had always watched the world with a darker fascination, wanting to see what would happen but feeling more that he was watching a great destruction, or a slow decay.

Not until Thor had he found something beautiful and bright and good.

He almost felt lost as Thor happily tugged him along to explore farther into the city, to find towers of gleaming glass and shadowy shapes of ancient stone.

His mortal was no longer his mortal, and Loki had been expecting Thor to hate him now, but he didn’t. He had been expecting Thor to abandon him, and he hadn’t.

In the morning, when lay beside him in their darkened room, curled up close to his side, Loki lay there with a strange, hollow feeling in his belly until unconsciousness came down.

*

Several months later, their lives were perfect.

They had finished their tour of Norway and had gone on through Sweden, Finland, a brief jaunt into Russia and then southwest all along the coast of the Baltic, and in all that time their travels had been smooth, flawless. Thor soaked up everything and always seemed to have some local sight in mind to visit wherever they were. He took pleasure in every new place, in every new experience.

And Loki was restless, a stubborn hollow emptiness growing in the pit of his stomach until he finally realized what it was.

In all that time, Thor had not killed, and Loki had not either—out of deference to Thor’s distaste for the idea, or because they were both well fed without it, he was not sure. But it was getting to him. That had to be what it was.

“Come with me,” he said one night while Thor was still lying on his belly on the bed, moonlight through the window caressing him and the light of the screen on his face, absorbed in whatever he was reading.

Thor rolled onto one elbow and looked up at him and smiled. “You have somewhere for us to go?”

Loki tensed slightly, out of his own control. “Yes. It’s long past time you learned to kill.”

At once the cheerfulness was gone, replaced with a grimace. “But we have no need to do that, Loki.”

“Still, you should know how.”

Thor looked away, unwilling to meet his eyes. “I think I may have picked up the gist of it in two centuries,” he murmured. “And if it ever comes to that, if we ever have no choice, you can show me then.”

It was reasonable and Thor was right—they didn’t need to do it. But Loki paced the floor anyway while Thor continued to not look at him.

“All right, it’s because _I_ want to. I’m sick of bagged blood and never having anything warm on my tongue. Come on, come with me.”

Thor shook his head.

“You don’t have to join me if you don’t want to. But you should at least see.”

Another head shake, calm but final.

A few minutes later Loki left alone, the door banging shut behind him, the hollowness only grown larger and shakier inside him.

What was he doing? Why had he done that? Loki wondered as he slipped through the shadows, absentmindedly searching for a victim. He knew Thor would refuse, and he had wanted—what, to upset him?

He had turned Thor into a monster, and Thor still was not one. Thor would not kill. He wanted to _speak_ to mortals, to converse with them and enjoy their company. He wanted to seek happiness and goodness in the world.

Loki was a relic of the past, a creature with hands bloodied from two thousand years of killing to survive, for a life of darkness and frantic flight, tenaciousness like claws the only thing that kept him clinging to the world.

Thor was something different, something new, something _better_ than Loki was.

Thor _deserved_ better than him, and perhaps Loki had served his purpose now. He had found his beautiful thing and made it immortal. It was the one good thing he had done, and maybe it should be his last.

In an alley, Loki found a wino and lured him close, and this was the monster Loki was. The man struggling, disoriented shoving, clumsy blows that Loki barely felt. Cursing at him until Loki cupped an immovable hand across his mouth, stifling him. The sour, distasteful scent as Loki ripped the scarf from his throat and put his own mouth to the filthy skin, fangs piercing it and lips sealing around the wound, blood flowing down his throat. Loki was careless, brutal. The man’s struggles ripped Loki’s fangs through his flesh, and Loki didn’t care, only squeezing tighter so he could not scream. Not at all the way he’d ever done it with Thor, but now all that was over, and he would never have it again.

He was a monster whose time was long past. He was a monster who mourned the loss of his tender, fragile mortal lover, after he had been the one to turn him.

In a fit of sudden anger, he ceased to drain the man in his arms and instead snapped his neck with both hands. Crushed it until the dying flesh bruised.

When he let the dead body slump to the ground, though, the fine hairs rose on his nape.

_Someone watching._

To be caught by a mortal could quickly turn disastrous, and he had been incautious, distracted, and his heart was suddenly thumping with fear. But when he turned, there, standing in silhouette in the mouth of the alley, was only Thor.

It should have been a relief. It was not. Thor stood perfectly motionless, the lightning in those eyes flickering.

“Thor,” Loki whispered, mouth still stained red. He shivered and wanted to run, wanted to flee, but he made himself remain.

Whatever Thor would do, Loki would take it. It was only what he deserved.

Slowly, steps soft on the asphalt, eyes still upon him, Thor approached.

“I’m sorry,” Loki choked out.

But, after a moment that felt like an eternity, Thor shook his head. “Don’t be,” he said, voice soft but determined. “I loved you all this time though I knew what you did to survive.”

“But you don’t like it,” Loki replied.

Thor shook his head. “I don’t. But I want you to be happy. I don’t want things to change between us. I don’t want you to think I would turn away because of this.”

“Maybe you should.”

And that made Thor stare, made him huff. “Loki…” he began.

Loki stared back, defiant.

“... if what you really needed was something warm on your tongue, you could have just asked me,” Thor said, voice small. “I could always drink enough of the horrible bagged blood for two.”

*

They tried Thor’s plan as soon as they got back to their rooms. Thor had fed already and Loki would not need much, after filling himself on the mortal, but it seemed they both wanted to try.

Thor was nervous, pulling off his coat and throwing it over the back of a chair, then picking it up and folding it and laying it down again. Sitting on the edge of the mattress and fidgeting and getting up and sinking back down, all in the time it took for Loki to divest himself of his own coat and gloves and boots.   

Pushing Thor down on the bed, Loki straddled his hips and put his hands to his face, stroking fingertips down his jaw. The hard immortal flesh, but still it was Thor, eyes tender upon him, accepting the possessiveness of Loki’s touch.

“I have been alive for two thousand years, and you are the loveliest creature I’ve ever found,” Loki said.

Thor’s answer was in the deep rise and fall of his chest, and the way he turned his head away, baring his neck, closing his eyes. And Loki sank down until their bodies were pressed together, and then he put his lips to the offered throat.

Thor had said he didn’t want things to change between them.

Loki, selfish monster that he had always been, wanted just what he had.

“My darling,” he murmured against Thor’s skin before sinking in his fangs, and Thor cried out, wrapped arms around him, held him as he took a few precious swallows and drew back, the taste as exquisite as it had ever been. And just for a little while, the dark emptiness fled.

He could not leave a world where he could have this. Where Thor could be immortal and magnificent and perfect and still allow him this. Where Thor would hold him close afterward and kiss him, sighing as if it had been ecstasy to have Loki drink from him again. He could not and he would not. He would take from the world all it could give.

Just before dawn Loki got up to check the locks on the doors and close the heavy curtains, and then returned to bed where Thor waited, one arm open to him.

Loki slid in beside him and wrapped his limbs around him and kissed Thor’s face, except Thor turned and nuzzled against him at the last moment, blue eyes flashing at him in the dark, fondly.

The world was different now. He had Thor, and now they had all eternity.

And what could be better than this?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, that's it for this one! I should have another Halloween-flavored fic or two over the next couple days, so look out for those. 
> 
> Feedback is loved here or [on tumblr](http://illwynd.tumblr.com/post/132005448805/at-last-it-is-time-for-spookyfic-or-well)!


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